


Tegami (Letter)

by snowdrops



Series: This is Where Our Story Ends [2]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Post-War, Bookman duties, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6848776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdrops/pseuds/snowdrops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The letters that he had been receiving every month since the war ended were piling up like the guilt that he was holding on to as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tegami (Letter)

Bookman rustled through the sheaves of paper on his desk, which were haphazardly stacked and scattered with no observable pattern. There were five new reports of war from South Asia and the Middle East, and his apprentice’s edited summaries of each report were already on the table. The third drawer on the right of his desk was slightly open – there was mail. He put the five war reports onto one of the stacks of paper, filed the summaries into a small folder, then pulled out the drawer and glanced at the mail. There was the electricity bill from the local power plant and a plain, white envelope. Was it the time of the month already?

He set down the two envelopes and checked the tasks off his mental to-do list, running his hand through his shock of red hair as he did so. Dinner wasn’t for another hour, and he had already checked and edited his apprentice’s summaries. Satisfied for the moment, he sat down in front of the desk. Leaving the bill untouched – he would have to endorse it later for billing exemption, but it could wait – he picked up the other envelope, noting the familiar curl of the written script.

 _182-3, GUYEONGRO, BEOMSEO-EUP, ULJU-GUN, ULSAN_  
_44925, REPUBLIC OF KOREA_  
 _LAVI BOOKMAN JUNIOR_

The return address he recognized as the Black Order’s. But it was strange – the envelope was definitely from China, judging from the paper’s texture. Was she in China? She hadn’t mentioned it in her previous letter.

He would forever wonder why he had given her the Bookman residence’s address. It had been a moment of weakness on his part; she’d asked if they could keep in touch after he left, and he had given it to her on condition that she never look for him there and only send him letters. The letters that he had been receiving every month since the war ended were piling up like the guilt that he was holding on to as well. The old panda hadn’t been happy when the first letter arrived, but that had been the least of his worries at the time – once the panda contracted pneumonia and passed on three months later, there was nobody left to carry the mantle of Bookman and nobody left to scold him about letters coming from his previous identity.

Grabbing his silver letter opener, he slowly opened the envelope and pulled the letter out.

His eye read and reread the message around six times in total despite memorizing it after the first time, noting the places where she had hesitated in writing certain lines, or crossed out and added in words. There were some small smudges nearing the end of the letter; even without thinking, he knew where they were from.

He took a deep breath, feeling some load lift slightly from his shoulders. Closing the letter and placing it back into the envelope, he placed it carefully in his personal letter basket in the closet. There were now twenty-four letters addressed to Lavi Bookman Junior in that basket, and outside it were twenty-three unlabeled ones. The twenty-fourth unlabeled one was half-buried in the mess of papers on the table, still only half written.

She had finally let go. It had taken her two years, but knowing her attachment to those important to her, he had feared she would never let go in the first place. Her letting him go would mean she could live without his ghost holding her back anymore, which was a relief. When he left London two years ago, his arm still broken and ribs still mending, the last thing he’d thought as ‘Lavi’ was that he wanted her to live a happy life.

He pulled out his quill and set it to the half-written letter that was on the table. In the time that he had been processing the information from the letter, he already knew what he wanted to write. As he wrote, he made his own mental plans. Kanda and Allen would be returning to London in early May; he would be in England around that time as well. It was frowned upon to keep in contact with anyone from previous records, but now that he was Bookman, he was afforded some liberty. Kanda Yuu had been an important part of his teenage life, and at the very least he wanted to bid him a proper goodbye.

He knew he would have to force them to not tell Lenalee. If she had set her mind to letting him go, he wasn’t about to undo that decision.

The twenty-fourth letter complete, he placed it in yet another unaddressed envelope and set it with its peers next to his letter basket. They were going to remain there for a long time yet; his apprentice was still very young and had a long way to go. But Bookman already had a plan – in fifteen years, when his apprentice turned of age, he would step down and relinquish his duty.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment or a kudos on your way out~


End file.
